Xbox Live is currently down with thousands of players in the UK and US reporting an outage, with most issues related to signing in, the main Xbox Live service and purchasing items.
Xbox fans are fuming tonight as games aren’t working and players can’t log in in a mass outage that’s been going on for hours.
No, it’s not just a screen freeze – Xbox Live is actually experiencing a major outage. Gamers across the platform are hitting a wall tonight with technical issues, particularly logging in, leaving countless players unable to immerse themselves in their favorite games like Minecraft.
The technical difficulties started around 8pm and continued, meaning a significant period of disruption. Down Detector, an online service that tracks outages worldwide, was inundated with about 30,000 complaints at the peak of the game’s prime time today, highlighting the scale of the glitch.
Reddit’s Xbox Support subreddit says the outage has been reduced to partial as of almost 1am GMT, but thousands of people are still reporting that they can’t use Xbox Live, with many giving up and going to bed. The services seem to be gradually coming back online as more regions access their games.
On Twitter, frustrated users aired their complaints about the outages. Ben, an angry Xbox enthusiast, expressed his outrage: “I think it’s incredibly stupid that I can’t play Minecraft because Xbox Live isn’t working.”
Gregg, another affected player, shared his mid-game misfortune: “Fought a dragon in the Elden ring and got kicked out because Xbox said the person who bought it had to log in and I can’t fix it because Xbox live is down.”
And Realz, looking for solidarity, asked, “Is Xbox Live not working for anyone else?”
The wave of Down Detector reports has begun to subside, now showing around 10,000, which could indicate that Microsoft is trying to regain control. However, this problem is far from solved for many players around the world who remain outside of Xbox Live.
Microsoft has acknowledged the issues plaguing Xbox users, and their service status page reveals: “You may be unable to sign in to your Xbox profile, be disconnected during sign-in, or have other related issues. Features that require logging in like most games, apps and social activities will not be available.”
The tech giant also informed players on Twitter: “We are aware that some users have been disconnected from Xbox Live. We are investigating! Our investigation is taking longer than expected, thank you for your patience and reports!”.
Last update
As of midnight, the Xbox Support page and the Xbox Status page still show the game service as down.
However, some gaming fans have reportedly started using the service. This suggests that Xbox is gradually starting to get the partial service, at least in the US, but there’s no word on a timeline for when all users will see their services back up and running.
00:58 Service Improvements – More regions have access to services. Gradually, services appear to be coming back online.
00:36 Service Improvements – Access in South East England (Reddit user could log in and play on Realm in Minecraft)
00:28 Service Degradation – Users report losing access to services after being temporarily online.
00:22 Service Improvements – The number of regions that have access to the services is constantly increasing. The incident is still marked as a major Xbox support outage, but due to the number of users claiming access to the services, I’ve posted a partial one here.
00:06 Service Improvements – Many parts of the US are now experiencing access to services.
11:40 p.m Service Improvements – Some regions are now PARTIALLY UP
23:23 Service Improvements – Users continue to report service availability. Multiple sources are reporting that users have partial access to Xbox Live services in certain areas (albeit unknown).
11:18 p.m Service Improvements – Check in mostly online now. Users of Xbox apps and consoles can sign in in most cases, but individual games that use Xbox Live and Xbox Store services still remain disconnected.
22:49 Service Improvements – Some users can login.
10:42 p.m Xbox noted that the problem is taking longer than expected to be resolved. This further returns the ETR.